I’ve been using the following for a lot of stuff for years. If its good for baby’s cribs, it can’t hurt to use it on a cutting board! There’s a good write-up on it at the link, and much more logical stuff, too.
The Crown Jewel of Wood Finishes: Baby Safe Crib Finishis the best wood finish for a raw wood crib. Closely followed by the Special Linseed Oil Wood Finish with a coat of the Looking Glass Beeswax Polish on top. These are pure, 100% natural, plant based finishes with zero driers or additives. No isocyanates, ever. No mineral spirits. Just pure, plant based, super filtered flax oil and a very clean beeswax which was selected to help support apiaries and national health of our bees. We have developed and refined our methods for cooking these special ingredients. We do this by hand in Asheville, in special batches with dedicated food grade vats that are never used for anything else but this. It’s basically a sacred day for us. Everyone loves making it. Great care is taken. The smell is exquisite and we love that our mountain finch flock and all sorts of bumble, honey and other bees come pay us a friendly visit on these batch days.
Osmo TopOil is officially Food Safe but be cautious with their other products. Most aren’t 100% plant based. I just tried Polyx on a project. Safety sheet says contains white spirits and tech support told me Naphtha. It’s dry but still smells strange up close 3 weeks after application.
One thing to keep in mind here is that “food safe” means that the company has tested the product in a variety of conditions and is willing to take on the risk of saying it’s food safe. In theory, many Osmo products are food safe (based on what’s on the MDS/SDS) but Osmo has not tested all of the products. Plus, they have a food safe option, let’s just buy that.
Personally, I lean entirely toward waxes and natural oils. I personally prefer RMP Finishes (formally Real Milk Paint Co) Wood Wax product. It’s walnut oil and carnauba wax, so it slowly builds up a strong and protective barrier as you reapply the product. Their cutting board product is also great, and I think it’s just a more liquid version of the wood wax.
Poorly refined mineral oil is definitely not a product you want on food or, really, near human contact as it can contain all kinds of exciting hydrocarbons that cause your body to behave in fun and exciting ways. As an American, our standards for mineral oil refining aren’t quite “YOLO”, but they’re not what I would want to bank the future of my internal organs on.
In a way, mineral oil is similar to linseed oil - you have to know what you’re buying to make sure you’re not buying something with horrible chemicals in it that are eventually going to give you turbo cancer. But at least with linseed oil, there are companies dedicated to making pure linseed oil products.
I just tried Polyx on a project. Safety sheet says contains white spirits and tech support told me Naphtha. It’s dry but still smells strange up close 3 weeks after application.
It smells a bit weird, but once the white spirits/naphtha off gasses it is, in theory, safe. I’m not going to use it, though.
Even then, we can’t trust our sense of smell because it’s possible to add chemicals to neutralize particular odors (think unscented laundry detergents). “Odorless” mineral spirits aren’t odorless, they’re “odor less” because of chemicals added to hide the smell that tells you you’re about to get brain damage.
